The Slovene government and many Slovene nationalists would like the issue of the erased to quietly disappear. But a new communications campaign — sponsored pro bono by a major Slovenian PR firm and with the help of some well-placed Slovenians such as Ljubljana’s mayor — is putting the stories of the Erased all over Ljubljana.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is Australia’s new, fair dinkum leader. Fair dinkum is Ozzie slang for the genuine article, the real McCoy.
In 1935, the People’s Liberation Army swept through Tibet on the Long March to evade Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalists. It was a grim time. Harassed by snipers, Mao’s armies faced a much greater challenge: cold and hunger. In the grassland plateaus of Tibet, the Communists died by the thousands.
In 2002, Boston University established the lyrical-sounding Presidents in Residence program for former African leaders. The idea was to lure the dictatorially inclined away from their countries so that a new generation of democratic leaders could take their place. As a spokesperson for the program put it more tactfully, “The vision is that having a very respectable position, which honors the individual and his achievements, will be seen as an enticement to those in power, or perhaps newly out of power but contemplating a return, that there is an appropriate civil course for them to pursue.” Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia was the first recipient of the fellowship.
The U.S. military has come up with some pretty good acronyms in the past, such as SNAFU (situation normal all f’d up) and FUBAR (f’d up beyond all repair). I recommend that the Pentagon consider inaugurating a new acronym for 2008: OOPS. It stands for outrageously, offensively, and profoundly stupid.
Many of the most resonant images from the Iraq War are as deceptive as the Bush administration’s rationales for starting the war in the first place. Consider the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein on April 8, 2003. Photos of the event show what seems to be a crowd of Iraqis pulling down the 40-foot monument in Paradise Square with the help of U.S. Marines. The press compared the event to the fall of the Berlin Wall. In fact, the event was carefully staged by the U.S. military, which had sealed off the area with tanks. The fall of the Wall it was not.
With the help of Rumsfeld and his ilk, the Bush administration created a world of words to create, implement, and justify its policies.
Nationalism is once again getting a makeover. Associated with all manner of ills—Nazism, genocide, unsavory dictatorships—nationalism is being rebranded by the same political science community that largely ignored the phenomenon for so many years. The latest issues of both Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy feature articles that proclaim the virtues of nationalism. In both cases, the claims are overstated.
One year ago, our greatest fear was that the president, still unable to master his hormones, would try to go mano a mano with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But then along came the December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which seemed to take the rug out from under the hawks by clearly stating that Iran halted its nuclear weapons development program in 2003.
This week at FPIF, we debut our new strategic focus on the global U.S. military footprint – and how to shrink it.